See Also: Forward Line or Attacking Line - Ice Hockey(gambling)
Midfield Line or Center Line - Soccer(gambling)
air quote(dictionary)
No quote(finance)
Quote(finance)
Quote(money)
quote(2)(dictionary)
quote(1)(dictionary)
Direct quote(money)
Mortgage quote(finance)

line(2) (iou) and air quote (oh)


line(2) (iou)



line noun2.
[Old English line = Middle Dutch line (Dutch lijn), Old High German lina (German Leine cord), Old Norse lina, prob. from Germanic from Latin linea; partly from Old & mod. French ligne from Proto-Romance var. of Latin linea, linia orig. use as noun (sc. fibra FIBRE) of fem. of lineus pertaining to flax, from linum flax: see LINE noun1.]
I.
A (piece of) rope, cord, or wire, esp. as serving a specified purpose. OE.
clew-line, clothes-line, drag-line, fishing-line, jerk-line, plumb-line, shroud line, spurling line, etc.
I. Shaw In the bow, with the neat coiled spirals of lines.
b. A fishing-line. ME.
cod-line, dandy-line, fly-line, paternoster line, etc.
L. Hellman A line on a fishing reel that tangled and couldn't be untangled.
c. In pl. Strings or cords for snaring birds. ME-M18.
d. A cord used for measuring, or for levelling or straightening. ME.
W. C. Bryant Trees then he felled..and carefully He smoothed their sides, and wrought them by a line.
e. A clothes-line. M18.
R. Adams Letting her drop, limp as an old garment fallen from a line.
f. In pl. Reins. dial. & US. E19.
Budget (Ohio) When the horses took off...He jumped on the wagon and grabbed the lines.
g. A telegraph or telephone wire or cable; a connection by means of this; an individual telephone number or extension. Also, any wire or cable serving as a conductor of electric current. M19.
chatline, helpline, etc.
J. Masters Macaulay was on the line. A. Brink The call came through. A very bad line, her voice..almost unrecognisable.
Rule, canon, precept; standard of life or practice. rare. ME-E17.
Bible (AV): Psalms 19:4 Their line is gone out through all the earth, and their words to the end of the world.
In pl. One's appointed lot in life (orig. with ref. to Psalms 16:6). E17.
J. G. Whittier My brother's lines have indeed fallen unto him in a pleasant place.
A cord in the body. rare. E17-L18.
A spider's thread. poet. M18.
W. Cowper Spun as fine As bloated spiders draw the flimsy line.
II.
A row of characters either written, printed, or displayed on a VDU; any of the rows of characters in a piece of text; in pl., the contents or sense of what is written, printed, or displayed. OE.
C. Wolfe We carved not a line, and we raised not a stone. T. Hardy Not a line of her Writing have I, Not a thread of her hair. S. Plath My hand made big, jerky letters..and the lines sloped down the page.
b. A unit of poetry written etc. as continuous text, usu. on one line; a verse; in pl., verses, poetry. Also (in pl.), a specified amount of text to be written out as a school punishment. M16.
C. S. Lewis If my lines rhymed and scanned and got on with the story I asked no more. E. Blishen One could cane them; give them lines.
c. Printing. A row of letterforms and spacing material produced by a composition system. M17.
d. A few words in Writing; esp. a short letter. M17.
D. L. Sayers To write a few lines to the Dowager Duchess.
e. In pl. = Marriage lines. Also (dial.), a certificate of church membership etc. E19.
R. Kipling I want..The name, an' lines to show, An' not to be an 'ore.
f. In pl. The words of an actor's part. L19.
M. Amis I felt the uneasiness of a good actor with bad lines.
A row of people or things; N. Amer. a queue. M16.
breadline etc.
W. Irving A line of trading posts from the Mississippi and the Missouri across the Rocky mountains. J. Reed There was a long line of people waiting to be let in.
b. In certain team Games as American Football, ice Hockey, etc.: a row of players. L19.
c. A row of machines or workstations progressively assembling or performing a succession of operations on a product during manufacture or processing. E20.
assembly line, production line.
d. In a business etc. organization, the chain of command or responsibility; the employees concerned directly with production as opp. to the provision of advisory and ancillary Services. E20.
Military. A trench, a rampart; in pl. (also collect. sing.), a connected series of fieldworks, defences, etc. Also, a row of huts or tents in a camp. M17.
Sloan Wilson A hundred men dropped behind the German lines to destroy a bridge.
b. Hist. In the war of 1914-18, the trenches collectively; the front line. Freq. in up the line below. E20.
S. Sassoon Up in the line one somehow lost touch with such humanities.
a. Nautical. A body of ships in formation one after the Other. E18.
T. Campbell While the sign of battle flew On the lofty British line.
b. Military. A wide-fronted shallow formation of troops or armoured vehicles etc. in adjacent columns. E19.
Lytton Suddenly the lines of the Moors gave way.
A regular succession of buses, ships, aircraft, etc., plying between certain places; a company conducting a business providing this. Orig. US. L18.
Scotsman The first vessel of the new direct line to Jamaica from England. A. Graham-Yooll The Houlder Brothers Shipping line..had been prominent in the meat trade for almost one century.
III.
A long narrow stroke or mark drawn or engraved on a surface or shown on a visual display unit. ME.
W. M. Craig An expression of forms only by simple lines. B. Malamud A heavy line was drawn on which to sign his name.
b. A mark limiting an area of play on a court or pitch for a game; spec. a mark that must be crossed in order to score; in racing, a mark on the track (actual or imaginary) at the winning-post. M16.
goal-line, halfway line, penalty line, service line, 22 metre line, etc.
c. Each of (usu. five) horizontal parallel equidistant strokes forming a stave in musical notation. E17.
d. Any of the lines employed in a picture; chiefly collect. or in gen. sense, character of draughtsmanship or method of rendering form in Art. E17.
e. The total effect of the disposition of the limbs, body, and head of a dancer, gymnast, skater, fencer, etc., in movement or repose. E20.
f. Instrumental or vocal melody; a structured sequence of notes or tones. E20.
R. H. Myers His Music has line..and the enormous merit of condensation. Melody Maker I consider jazz to be a lot of horns and one of those top speed bass lines.
g. Each of the narrow horizontal strips forming a Television picture. E20.
a. A thing resembling a drawn stroke or mark, esp. in a natural object, as a thin band of colour; a suture, a ridge. ME.
J. Tyndall Along the faces of the sections the lines of stratification were clearly shown.
b. A furrow or seam in the face or hands; Palmistry a mark on the palm of the hand supposed to indicate one's fate, temperament, or abilities. M16.
I. Zangwill There were lines of premature age on the handsome face. A. Fraser Already the characteristic deep lines..had formed from nostril to chin.
c. A narrow peak or trough of intensity in a spectrum, appearing as a fine straight black or bright band transverse to the length of the spectrum (cf. Fraunhofer lines, Fraunhofer's lines s.v. FRAUNHOFER 1). Also, a component of emitted radiation at a discrete wavelength or narrow range of wavelengths, represented by such a band. M19.
A circle of the terrestrial or celestial sphere. Now rare. LME.
Milton Under the Ethiop Line By Nilus head. Pope Where spices smoke beneath the burning Line.
a. Math. A continuous extent of length without thickness, freq. repr. by a drawn line (sense 11); the track of a moving point. LME.
b. A curve connecting all points having a common property. Usu. with specifying word. E19.
A straight line (sense 14) imagined as drawn between two points, or between some point and the observer; spec. the (usu. imaginary) continuous horizontal mark through the feet of most letters. LME.
A contour, an outline; lineament. LME.
Shelley The dim long line before Of a grey and distant shore.
b. Fashion. The outline or dominant features of composition of a dress or suit. E20.
A-line, empire-line, etc.
Times The curved line was seen in all the long coats. Vogue Overall, a clear narrowing of the silhouette,..presaging an even sparer line for autumn.
A direction as indicated by marks on a surface, a row of people or things, etc. Freq. in come into line, bring into line below. L15.
E. Hoyle When your Adversary has a Bishop and one Pawn on the Rook's Line. G. A. Lawrence Get the horses in line, to start them for the farmer's Cup.
b. Military. An arrangement of companies side by side. L18.
Tennyson And he call'd 'Left wheel into line!'
c. A particular policy or set of policies which a politician may maintain or expect others to follow; = party line s.v. PARTY noun. Orig. US. L19.
G. F. Kennan He had to follow..the line his government had laid down for him. H. Macmillan His intervention followed the line of an article which had already appeared in the Daily Express.
d. A marked tendency, a policy or trend; colloq. a glib or superficially attractive mode of address or behaviour, plausible talk. E20.
A. L. Rowse He has a fine line in Churchillian invective. Globe & Mail (Toronto) Try that line on your spouse. 'Dear, we're not going to save money.'
e. The point spread for a number of Football Games on which bets may be laid. US colloq. M20.
Degree, rank, station. E16-L18.
G. A. Bellamy She had received a more liberal Education than is usually bestowed upon English women in the middle line of life.
A limit, a boundary. L16.
Maginot Line, Mason-Dixon line, Plimsoll line, Wallace's line, etc.
C. Isherwood For her, the line between reality and hallucination is getting very thin.
b. Bridge. A line across a score-card. Chiefly in above the line, below the line below. E20.
c. The boundary between a credit and a debit in an account. M20.
One twelfth of an inch. M17.
In pl.
a. The outlines, plan, or draft of a building etc.; spec. in Shipbuilding, the outlines of a vessel as shown in its horizontal, vertical, and oblique sections. L17.
G. Semple The principal Lines of my Design of a Bridge suitable to that Place. C. Reade Her extravagant poop that caught the wind, and her lines like a cocked hat reversed.
b. fig. Plan of action, procedure, etc. M18.
L. Strachey He laid down the lines for a radical reform in the..administration of the army.
IV.
A lineage, a stock, a race. ME.
H. Belloc His line survives to-day. J. Clavell Our Queen's the third of the Tudor line.
b. A breed or variety of animal or plant universally characterized by some feature whose strength is the criterion for continued selection by breeders. Cf. line-bred, line-breeding below. E19.
A continuous series of people in chronological succession, esp. several generations of a family. Freq. with specifying word. ME.
W. Cowper In the line Of his descending progeny. J. T. Story The Gladstones originally came from a long line of East Anglian politicians.direct line, female line, male line.
V.
A course of action, procedure, life, thought, or conduct. ME.
Disraeli I should then have inherited some family line of conduct, both moral, and political. G. C. Lewis The Protectionists..have taken no line in the matter.
A track, a course, a direction; a route. LME.
W. Cowper Though..the shaft..err but little from the intended line. I. Zangwill They ran on parallel lines that never met.
b. A single track of a railway (freq. in the up line, the down line). Also, a branch or route of a railway or the whole system of railways under one Management. E19.
belt line, branch line, main line, shunt line, etc.
J. Masters An engine whistling..a mile up the line.
c. A settlement road, a bush road. Chiefly Canad. & NZ. E19.
d. The straight or direct course in the hunting field or round a racetrack (also racing-line). M19.
e. A row of traps or of poison bait. M19.
f. A pipe or tube (of great or indefinite length in relation to its thickness). M19.
g. In Golf, the direction of the hole from the position of a player's ball. In Cricket, the direction of flight of the ball from the bowler's hand. L19.
In pl. Goings on, caprices or fits of temper. rare (Shakes.). L16-E17.
A department of activity; a kind or branch of business or occupation. M17.
Dickens Mr Augustus Cooper was in the oil and colour line. B. Pym Memorial Services were not much in Edwin's line.
Commerce. (An order for, the stock in hand of) a particular design or class of goods. M19.
S. Unwin They are mostly content with quick-selling lines such as Annuals. H. Fast Fritz Alcheck..carried a line of men's haberdashery.
b. The amount which one underwriter (or one company) accepts as his or her share of the total value of the subject matter covered by insurance. L19.
c. A dose of a powdered narcotic or hallucinatory drug, as cocaine, heroin, etc., laid out in a line for use. slang. L20.
Observer Everybody I know takes heroin...Every party..has smack available, lines and lines of it.
Phrases: (A selection of cross-refs. only is included.) above the line (a) Bridge (of points) scored for game, honours, overtricks, rubber, or for the failure of opponents to fulfil their contract; (b) Economics (spent etc.) on items of current expenditure; Advertising in the mass media; Cinematography (incurred etc.) before filming begins. all along the line, all down the line, all the way down the line at every point. below the line (a) Bridge (of points) scored for tricks bid and won, and counting towards the game; (b) Economics (spent etc.) on items of capital expenditure; Advertising on means of Promotion Other than the mass media; Cinematography (incurred etc.) during and after filming. bottom line: see BOTTOM adjective. bring into line cause to agree, conform, or cooperate. by rule and line with precision. come into line agree, conform, cooperate. contour line: see CONTOUR noun 2. do a line with Austral. & NZ colloq. (try to) enter into an amorous relationship with. DOTTED line. draw the line at refuse to go as far as or beyond. equinoctial line: see EQUINOCTIAL adjective 1. FIRST line. Fraunhofer lines, Fraunhofer's lines see FRAUNHOFER 1. front line: see FRONT noun & adjective. get a line on acquire information about (a thing), come to know. get one's lines crossed, get the lines crossed have a misunderstanding, become confused. give a person line enough let a person continue unhindered for a time in order to secure or detect him or her later. hard lines (usu. colloq.) bad luck, hardship. heaving line: see HEAVE verb. hold the line: see HOLD verb. hook, line, and sinker: see HOOK noun. hot line: see HOT adjective. in line so as to form a straight line (with); in line with, in accordance with. in one's line suited to one's capacity, taste, etc. lateral line: see LATERAL adjective etc. lay it on the line, put it on the line (a) hand over money; (b) state (something) clearly, plainly, or categorically. lay on the line, put on the line place (one's career etc.) at risk. line abreast Nautical a number of parallel ships ranged on a line crossing the keels at right angles. line ahead Nautical a number of ships following one another in a line. line astern (in) an aircraft formation in which a number of planes follow one another in a line. line by line, line for line from beginning to end, seriatim. line of battle: see BATTLE noun. line of Beauty the curve (resembling a slender elongated S) held by Hogarth to be a necessary element in all Beauty of form. line of business spec. in the 18th- and 19th-cent. theatre, the kind of part for which an actor or actress was specifically engaged. line of country: see COUNTRY noun. line of credit a loan by one country to another, to be utilized by the second for buying goods from the first; credit extended by a bank to a commercial concern to a certain amount; the amount so extended. line of defence: see DEFENCE noun 3. line of fire the expected path of gunfire, a missile, etc. line of flotation: see FLOTATION 1. line of force Physics a curve whose direction at each point is that of the electric etc. force there. line of fortune = line of life (b) below. line of least RESISTANCE. line of life (a) Classical Mythology the thread spun and cut by the Fates, determining the length of a person's life (cf. LIFELINE 2); (b) = LIFELINE 3. line of march: see MARCH noun3. line of metal: see METAL noun 7. line of sight: see SIGHT noun. line of vision: see VISION noun. long line: see LONG adjective1. loxodromic line: see LOXODROMIC adjective. meridian line: see MERIDIAN adjective 3. not one's line not one's vocation or calling, not among one's pursuits or interests. on the line (a) at risk; (b) (of a picture) exhibited with its centre about level with the spectator's eye. open line: see OPEN adjective. out of line not in alignment with, discordant; step out of line, get out of line, etc., behave in an unconventional, discordant, or inappropriate manner. out of one's line unsuited to one's capacity, taste, etc. outside line: see OUTSIDE adjective. pay on the line pay promptly. pure line: see PURE adjective. put it on the line: see lay it on the line above. put on the line: see lay on the line above. read between the lines discover a meaning or purpose in a piece of Writing etc. not obvious or explicitly expressed. red line: see RED adjective. ride the line US make the circuit of the boundary of a cattle-drift in order to drive in stray cattle. right line: see RIGHT adjective. second line: see SECOND adjective. ship of the line a line-of-battle ship. shoot a line colloq. put on an act, talk pretentiously, boast. soft line: see SOFT adjective. somewhere along the line at some point (in time). stand in line N. Amer. form a queue. the end of the line: see END noun. the line (a) the equinoctial line; spec. (Line) the Equator; (b) US the Mason-Dixon line; (c) in the British army, the regular and numbered regiments as distinguished from the Guards and the auxiliary forces; in the US army, the regular fighting force of all arms; (d) Canad. the US-Canadian border. thin blue line: see THIN adjective. toe the line: see TOE verb 2. up the line Military to the battle-front. visual line: see VISUAL adjective. wet one's line: see WET verb. white line: see WHITE adjective. yellow line: see YELLOW adjective. YRAST line. Z line: see Z, Z 6.
Comb.: line angle Dentistry the angle at the junction of two surfaces of a tooth or cavity; line-at-a-time printer = line printer below; linebacker Amer. Football a player just behind the defensive line (middle linebacker: see MIDDLE adjective); linebacking Amer. Football playing as a linebacker; line blanking Television the suppression of signals that would contribute to the picture during fly-back of the scanning spot between the transmission of successive lines; line block a block bearing a design in relief from which an illustration made up of lines without variations in tone may be printed; an illustration printed in this way; line-boat a boat used for line-fishing; line-book (a) Printing (obsolete exc. Hist.) a book in which compositors kept account of the lines of set type credited and debited to them; (b) RAF slang a record of boasts; line-bred adjective produced by line-breeding; line-breeding selective breeding of animals for some desired feature by mating within a related line; line-camp N. Amer. a camp, esp. a cabin, for ranch hands in an outlying part of a large ranch; line-casting adjective (of a composing-machine) that casts type a line at a time; line Dance a type of country and western Dance in which dancers line up in a row without partners and follow a choreographed pattern of steps to Music; line-Dance verb intrans. perform a line Dance; line-dancer a person who dances a line Dance; line-drawing a drawing done with a pen or pencil, a drawing in which images are produced from variations of lines; line-drawn adjective made by line-drawing; line-drive Baseball a ball driven straight and low above the ground; line drop Electrical Engineering the voltage drop between two points on a transmission line; line editor Computing a program that enables the editing of one line at a time on a VDU display; line-ending (a) = line-filling below; (b) the end of a line of poetry; line-engraved adjective made by line engraving; line-engraver a practitioner of line engraving; line engraving the Art of engraving, by lines incised on the plate, as distinguished from etching and mezzotint; an engraving executed in this manner; linefeed the action of advancing of paper in a printing machine by the space of one line; (a character or code causing) an analogous movement of text on a VDU screen; line-fence N. Amer. a boundary fence between two farms or ranches; line-filling a flourish or ornament in the blank space at the end of a line of manuscript; line finder Telephony a selector which searches for the calling subscriber's line when he or she lifts the receiver so that the line can be connected to a group of selectors available to any caller; line-finishing = line-filling above; line-firing Military firing by a body of men in line; line-fisherman a person who practises line-fishing; line-fishing fishing with a line as opp. to a net; fishing with a long line with many baited hooks attached at intervals; line frequency Television the number of scanning lines produced per second; line gale US = line-storm below; line gauge Printing a ruler showing the size of a type or types; line graph: in which the values of the variables are represented by a (continuous) line (cf. bar chart s.v. BAR noun1); line haul US slang a scheduled truck route or movement of freight; line-integral Math. the integral, taken along a line, of any differential that has a continuously varying value along that line; line-integration the operation of finding a line-integral; line judge a linesman in a tennis match; line loss Electrical Engineering loss of electrical energy along a transmission line; line manager a manager to whom an employee is directly responsible; line officer an officer holding command in a line regiment; line pin any of the pins used to fasten a bricklayer's line; line pipe pipe specially manufactured for use in pipelines; line printer a machine that prints output from a computer a line at a time; line regiment a regular and numbered regiment in the British army, a regiment of the line; line-ride verb intrans. (US) perform the action of line-riding; line-rider US a person engaged in line-riding; line-riding US the action of riding the line (see ride the line above); line scan (a device or technique using or involving) the motion of a scanning beam or spot along a line, or over an object or scene line by line; line-sequential adjective designating a system of colour Television in which each line of the picture is in one of the three primary colours, the colour changing for each successive line; line shaft, line shafting a shaft, shafting, of relatively great length from which a number of separate machines are driven by countershafts or endless belts; line-side adjective adjacent to a railway line; line-soldier a soldier of a line regiment, a linesman; line space the space between the rows of characters in text; a space equivalent to a line of text; line-space lever, line-space mechanism, etc., a device that turns the platen of a typewriter to a new line of Writing; line-spacing noun & adjective (a) noun the space between successive lines of text; (b) adjective designating or pertaining to the device that moves the platen to a new line; line spectrum a spectrum consisting of separate isolated lines; an emission (of light, sound, or Other radiation) composed of a number of discrete frequencies or energies; line-squall a squall, consisting of a violent straight blast of cold air with snow or rain, occurring along a cold front; line standard (a) a standard of length in the form of a bar marked with two lines, the distance between which (under specified conditions) is the standard length; (b) the number of lines constituting a complete Television picture; line-storm US an equinoctial storm; line-synchronizing adjective designating a pulse transmitted in a Television signal which causes the scanning process in the receiver to remain in synchrony with that at the transmitter; line-width Physics the width of a spectral line as measured by the difference in wavelength, wave number, or frequency between its two limits; line-wire Telegraphy the wire which connects the stations of a telegraph-line; line-work (a) drawing or designing executed with the pen or pencil (as opp. to wash etc.); (b) copy or reproduction consisting of solid elements as distinct from halftone; (c) work as a lineman.

air quote (oh)



n [C usually plural]
a movement that someone makes in the air with their fingers to show that what they are saying should be in quotation marks, and that it should not be taken as their real opinion or their usual way of speaking